Minecraft 1.3 Adding LAN, Adventure Mode In August

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Scrolls just hit playable Alpha, and Notch is off programming computers inside of other computers (inside of other computers still, if life as we know it is in fact a nightmarish artificial construct), but Minecraft keeps on plugging away. LAN support – an art thought to be lost to the ravages of time and overbearing game services – was already a known quantity, but Mojang’s detailed gobs of other stuff that’ll be included as well. Sadly, an official modding API didn’t make the cut, but Adventure Mode sounds interesting. And hey, there’s also an NPC trading system, readable/writable books, and updated cookies!

Minecraft lead Jens Bergensten outlined a few of the biggest changes in a blog post:

“We’ve added emeralds, emerald ore and a trading system that makes it possible to buy items from villagers. Villagers will add and remove items depending on what you buy. We’ve added the possibility write in books and leave stories for other people. We’ve added new terrain features, and you can choose to begin the game with a ‘bonus chest’ to get you started quicker.”

“We’ve added tripwire, so you can create new traps and contraptions. We’ve also added new stairs, new half-slabs, cocoa plants and tweaked dispensers, leaves, cauldrons, levers, gravel, pressure plates, cookies, buckets, boats, minecarts, ice, furnaces… Plus you get magic orbs from mining and smelting (and not just killing monsters)!”

Adventure Mode, meanwhile, disables building, fire-starting, and buckets in favor of exploration as a mere mortal – and not some block-obsessed demigod.

Bergensten also noted that the modding API is now looking like a lock for 1.4, as LAN support is actually just a byproduct of single-player/multiplayer tech merge put in place so everyone won’t have to make more than one version of the same mod. There is, however, a slight catch: Minecraft’s admittedly meager system requirements have leveled up. “When playing single-player, the game needs to be able to both simulate and emulate the world, which take many more CPU cycles,” Bergensten explained. “We’re working on optimizing rendering, but those improvements will not be included until Minecraft 1.4.”

So there’s a ton on the way, and the first batch of new toys is headed your way on August 1. For now, though, you can grab a new snapshot if you’re feeling a wee bit guinea piggish, or – if the call of your adorable rodent ancestors is being drowned out by a need to read – here’s the full list of patch notes.

Yes, items can be smaller than cubes, the cubes will either be blocks of emeralds (9 emeralds crafted into a block) or emerald ore, which when mined will yield a number of emeralds (or just 1 if they’re like diamonds) You generally can’t place items smaller than a full block, or even when you can they will take up a full block (some minor exceptions such as paintings exist, though I’m fairly positive they still take up the “block”, but you can walk through them) Different blocks behave in different ways though, so it’s slightly more dynamic than “everything is a cube”

This singular measured size of a “block” is the only reason you can have minecraft worlds so large, each block is mapped as being a certain type of block, if there were half blocks or quarter blocks etc then the size of a world in bytes would grow exponentially.

I suppose it could be possible to have blocks be smaller (IE each current block being say 8 smaller blocks, but that would mean each metre cubed ingame (A block is 1 metre cubed) would take up 8 times the data. This would allow for more detailed building but worlds couldn’t be even close to as big as they are now as rendering 8 times as many blocks would make most modern PCs shit themselves.

Non-block items can take smaller visual space but still effectively take a full block of space. Most often mining small things means you’ll find a block that drops a few of them as opposed to a single one.

Mods like Redpower, however, do add sub-blocks (up to 1/8th of a block).

Notch is off programming computers inside of other computers (inside of other computers still, if life as we know it is in fact a nightmarish artificial construct)

Nightmarish? That’s a bit harsh!

Anyway, if the Matrix taught us anything, the real real world is the true nightmare, where we live in underground hovels full of religious zealots who shun technology and eat wallpaper paste. I’ll take the ‘nightmarish’ pretend earth from 2012 any day.

I’m looking forward to the merger of single and multiplayer. A fair few awesome mods have been unavailable for online japery due to the effort required in converting them to SMP. Getting rid of that can only improve matters.

Minetest has done that for a while. It’s quite neat; all the mod-ness is server-side in Lua, so clients can just connect and get a modded game going, without having to download anything except caching textures etc., and the resultant security niceties.

I can’t wait for this modding API. It should take a huge weight off modders shoulders not having to code to a moving target. This should mean that instead of wasting time making the mod compatible with the latest version of Minecrack they can focus on fixing bugs and adding needed features. If modding can be made easier them modders will not have to deal with as many support issues as well.

I feel no need to update soon. There is so many mods that must become compatible before I take the step up. The mods I use adds much more than what this update has to offer or for that matter anything that Mojang ever could do.
Also what does the modding API really adds? We already have forge API and I suspect that Mojangs API wont even come close to forges functionality.

There’s also the fact that a lot of “supermod” packs, like Technic and Yogbox, have had to do significant amounts of block renumbering to avoid mods colliding with each other.

And some mods require altering base classes, which puts you in a tricky situation if two different mods both want to update the same base class.

I would hope that whatever mod system Mojang comes up with, it’s a lot more plug-n-play, with renumbering handled transparently and more pluggable base classes (at least enough to deal with the common cases).